The Condemned (39 page)

    
She felt a little ashamed now for thinking Amato had been playing those kind of games with her; it almost seemed to depreciate from the intensity of the whole thing, from the realness of it. She hadn’t meant to taint his love by
expecting the worst of him, it was just what she had come to expect.

    
She could feel herself falling into some deep pit, one that she was very afraid of. If she let go of the sides, stopped clinging onto what was holding her back, she would find herself plummeting through the unknown darkness and she was terrified that when she hit the bottom she’d end up broken.
If she let herself fall in love with Amato, would she get hurt?

    
There was a small, niggling voice inside of her that kept asking ‘So what? What if you
do
get hurt? Did it ever occur to you that what comes in between might be worth it, might just be the best thing that ever happened to you in your whole life? Why are you so afraid of giving yourself the chance to be happy?’
She pushed it away, couldn’t quiet it for good
,
but chose to ignore it for now.

    
It was what he wanted from her, she just wasn’t prepared to give it to him just yet, there was no point dwelling on it, might aswell just enjoy what they had for now. The sex was amazing; ugly, nasty, rough, brutal even, but amazing and contrasted starkly to his ability to be so tender, gentle, loving, considerate, the rest of the time. She wasn’t going to turn down such a good thing just because she couldn’t get her head around her own feelings.

     
‘Alright, fine.’ She conceded. ‘But if anything goes
wrong I’m totally blaming you. Ok?’

    
He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose.
‘Nothing will go wrong, I promise.’

     
‘Famous last words’ Leci muttered and sprang away with a squeal as he reached down and spanked her ass playfully.

Chapter 36

Amato pul
led something out of his pocket,
Leci strained to see what it was.

    
The small box was tattered, filthy,
and
held together
, just about,
by a rubber band. It may have had pictures on it at one point but it didn’t anymore
, it was too faded
. Through holes she could see colours though, red and white, through the layer of dirt of course.

    
He peeled open the end of the box and shook a deck of playing cards into his hand. Leci’s eyes widened. She hadn’t seen one of those in a long time.

     
‘Where’d you get those?’ She asked.

     
‘Found ‘em stashed away at the cabin. Used to play quite a bit, it’s a good way of passing the time when you’re on a quiet shift.’

    
He shuffled them expertly, Leci was
duly
impressed. She d
idn’t remember much about cards,
Xavian had played a lot but they had never interested her, not when she had easier ways of earning a living.

     
‘You know how to play Poker?’ He looked up at her. Leci shook her head.

     
‘Nope. Xavian tried teaching me a couple of times but I wasn’t all that good at learning it.’ That was only half true.

    
If she ha
d set her mind to it
,
she coul
d’ve picked up the game quickly,
Leci wasn’t smart but she wasn’t stupid either and it was a simple enough concept.

     
‘I’ll teach you.’ He dealt out cards to her, Leci glanced around the bar. They had checked the place out
, wandered around the town, she ha
d kept her eyes peeled for any sign of the men
,
but as time passed and she saw nothing her hopes of finding them fell. She had really expected he would be right about this, had almost known they would find them here. Some weird feeling in her bones, she couldn’t explain it.

    
She realised now
that she ha
d been kidding herself, eager for the whole thing to be over and done with, to find peace, to lay the ghost of her brother to rest and be able to get on with her own life
;
now that there seemed to be a chance she might have one waiting for her. The plan, years ago, when she had begun her search, had always been that if she had found them and managed to survive the confrontation, which in itself was highly unlikely, she would have ended her own life soon after, her purpose found, her job done, there was nothing left.

     Except... n
ow there was, and the whole thing had stopped being a suicide mission. There was real hope for success but more importantly, there was the prospect of happiness afterwards.

    
Maybe.

    
If she let there be.

    
Shut up!

    
Damn that voice!

     But yeah... t
he longer they had walked around and found nothing, checked out both bars
and found no sign of their prey;
the more she had come to realise that the odds just weren’t in their favour.

    
Five years had passed.

    
The men could be anywhere by now, hell, they could already be dead for all she knew.

    
Finally, after scouring the town, they had returned to the inn where
their room was
. Amato had suggested it would perhaps be better to wait downstairs for any appearance
,
and Leci, doubting it would happen, had seen no reason to disagree. They had settled themselves at a table in the far corner, one that gave them a good view of both the entrance
,
and
of
the stairway leading up to the rented rooms. From their position they could see pretty much the entire bar. It was a good vantage point; if their targets walked in, they’d be seen.

    
Leci still wore the cap pulled down, covering her hair and shading most of her face. She was worried about being recognised, but maybe she was just giving herself a bit too much credit there? The only really memorable thing about her
was the fact that she could start fires out of thin air, other than that she was a nobody and looked pretty much the same as every other girl who passed through the place.

    
As the afternoon wore on
,
and the place grew gradually darker, the creeping shadows adding to the already seedy atmosphere, Leci picked up the game. Amato was a good teacher, he was patient with her and though she suspected he might be letting her win a lot of the time
,
she discovered that she quite enjoyed it and could even understand the addictive way Xavian had played.

    
She sort of lost track of paying attention to what was going on around them, every now and then she would lift her head and scan the place but she didn’t give it any more than a cursory glance
,
since she didn’t expect to see what she was looking for.

    
When they had
arrived
here it had been fairly empty, only one or two of the tables had been occupied
,
and a row of drunk
ard
s lined the bar. Gradually the place had filled and had grown noisier as people
came to drown their sorrows,
or fought over cards
,
or coins
,
or women
, or weapons.
One fight had broken out so far
,
but nobody had been killed, some guy had wandered away with a broken nose, blood running down his chin
,
and missing his boots, but other than that, there wasn’t really anything exciting going on.

    
Amato had been drinking whiskey steadily through the
course of the afternoon but he didn’t seem affected by it, Leci had wanted to keep her wits about her and had chosen to stay sober. The bartender looked over at them occasionally but other than that they didn’t seem to have drawn
any attention to themselves. W
hen you combined drink with tempers that already ran at a permanent low
,
and men who were always out to prove that they were tougher than everyone else, sometimes all you had to do was get caught looking at the wrong person to find yourself drawn into a fight. Most of the time it was safer to keep to yourself
, mind your own business
. The majority of brawls that broke out in places like this would usually end with little more than a lot of blood and maybe a few broken bones. Some hurt pride of course, but you get so much testosterone in a small, alcohol fuelled environment and that was pretty much a given.
Sometimes
things would turn bad, weapons would be brought out, knives or guns. If you were smart you knew to get out of there as fast as you could when that happened. If you decided to stick around and watch the fun
,
there was always a chance you’d end up being a part of the entertainment.

    
With no real law in place to govern behaviour it was left, in these instances, to the business owners themselves to take the matter into their own hands, if they chose to do so. More than once Leci had seen a barkeep break up a fight with his own gun, downing whoever was a part of it in a warning to
others that he wished to keep a peaceful establishment. Kind of ironic, really.

    
Amato swept the cards back into his hand, shuffled them but didn’t deal again, instead he packed them back away into the box and tucked them in his pocket, looking around the place slowly before switching his gaze to Leci.

      ‘No sign of
them?’ He asked.

    
She shook her head, turning her attention back to the crowded room and scanning it slowly. She opened her mouth to reply and then froze.

    
She blinked, staring at the man.

    
He was stood, leaning against the bar, sideways on and talking to some other guy who had his back to Leci. He was about regular height, a little shorter than A
mato. His hair was longer now, it had been cut short before,
but now it was pulled into a small ponytail at the back of his head. He hadn’t had a beard
back
then either, now it covered the bottom half of his face.

    
It didn’t hide his eyes though
,
they were far too familiar for her to be mistaken. She had stared into them, hating him, wishing for the strength to kill him. They were burned into her memory.

    
Leci heard a strange noise and it took her a moment to realise that she was making low, frightened mewling sounds. Her hands, resting in her lap, were clenched tightly into
small fists, her fingernails digging painfully into her palms, her knuckles
were
white from the strain.

    
Amato followed her gaze and watched the man for a few seconds then looked to the one he was speaking to, the one with his back to them. Leci wasn’t good enough to know from the hunched shape alone whether or not he was another of her attackers.

     
‘Is that them?’ He asked, reaching a hand across to her beneath the table, finding and grasping one of hers, gently unclenching her fingers and stroking them softly, comfortingly.

     
‘I... I don’t know...’ She replied, having a little trouble getting the words out.

     
‘He is, definitely. I dunno about the other guy... I’d need to see his face.’
As she spoke the man turned slightly and raised a hand, waving at somebody else. She shook her head. He wasn’t one of them.

     
‘No, only the guy with the beard so far.’

    
They watched as he picked up a mug of ale from the bar top, patted the seated man on the back in a friendly way and then made his way into the crowd. Leci lost him as he entered the closely packed mob, panicked at the thought of finding him only to have him slip away and she stood quickly. Amato grabbed a hold of her hand and tugged her back down before she got a chance to see anything.

     
‘Easy there, princess. H
e’s not going anywhere. Now... l
isten to me... Leci...?’